Fall COMMON, San Antonio, TX – September 21, 1997 – Two of Nexgen’s year 2000 conversion clients have gone live with their century-enabled legacy BPCS® code, today announces Rick Halsten, Nexgen President and General Manager. He reports that Bunge Corporation of St. Louis and Thrall Car Manufacturing Co. of Chicago Heights have both successfully converted their BPCS® programs using Nexgen’s Focus/2000 automated conversion solution.

Chris Brunk, Manager of IT at Bunge Foods, selected Focus/2000 to century-enable BPCS® Version 3.1. Bunge worked with consultants from Nexgen and from its distributor, Professional Software Consultants, Inc. of Lenexa, Kansas. "They completed the conversion and unit testing less than five weeks after starting the project. Then we assembled a team of users to do system testing. Once the users were satisfied, we cut over to the converted system. The time from project start until the cutover was only four months. We saved 50% of our original year 2000 budget and currently the system is functioning as expected."

Jim Mestan, MIS Manager at Thrall Car Manufacturing, relates that they "are on an old version of BPCS® , version 2.0, which is heavily modified. In six months, we went through over 1 million lines of code. We went live August 1 and have successfully closed the books for August. This project was finished before the due date and under budget."

Focus/2000 helps BPCS® users overcome a formidable challenge

Close to 8,000 sites worldwide rely on the BPCS® manufacturing and distribution software to run their businesses. Without Focus/2000, clients who are not already live on BPCS® Version 6 (which is year 2000 compliant) face a formidable challenge. Version 6 introduced a radically different set of architectures (client/server, partially object-oriented) which many clients cannot implement without considerable expenditures of time and money. Alternatively, clients who wish to stay on their current version of the software would have a significant undertaking to century-enable their systems manually or using a less robust tool solution. As an example, BPCS® Version 4.05 has approximately 2,000 database files, 1,200 CL programs, and 1,600 RPG programs in which dates must be fixed. Since most companies have modified BPCS® , the number of programs and files is even greater. Nexgen developed Focus/2000 to automate the task. This high level of automation—combined with professional services from experienced BPCS® professionals at Nexgen and its distributors—reduces the project turnaround to weeks or months instead of the years many users have budgeted.

Thrall Car Manufacturing Co., headquartered in Chicago Heights, Illinois, is a manufacturer of railroad cars. Bunge Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, is a manufacturer of food ingredients and food products.

Nexgen Software Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in Naperville, Illinois, a Chicago suburb in the area’s High Technology Corridor. Since 1990, Nexgen has focused on providing implementation and custom modification services to BPCS® users. Nexgen/2K, Inc. and Nexgen Asia/Pacific, Inc. were founded in 1997 to market Focus/2000 as a millennium solution for the BPCS® market and Nexgen/2K as a millennium solution for other AS/400 software. For more information, contact Gerard Wolf at +1 (630)300-6000, via fax at +1 (630)300-6122, or via email at n2kpr@nexgeninfo.com.

Focus/2000 and Nexgen/2K are trademarks of Nexgen/2K, Inc.

*BPCS® is a trademark of System Software Associates, Inc.